


Greet Me With Goodbye

by SecretBluebird



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Everyone Is Gay, F/F, Good for them, Help, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, References to Arctic Monkeys, References to Hamlet, Useless Lesbians, english major crisis, it is 1 am, these b!tches gay, what do people even put into the tags, wlw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:01:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28210575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecretBluebird/pseuds/SecretBluebird
Summary: An Annabelle Cane x Jane Prentiss no powers college AU where they meet in a bar and Annabelle has a crisis. It's pretty gay.
Relationships: Annabelle Cane/Jane Prentiss
Kudos: 2





	Greet Me With Goodbye

I’ve always found coffee shops unbearably cliche. The smell repulses me, as do the cynics and sycophants who crowd the place to study. English majors gravitate toward it, bringing their laptops and their hangovers as they try to play intellectual. “It’s the atmosphere,” they say. Bullshit. Buildings don’t have an atmosphere.   
A coffee shop, at its core, is nothing more than the same crumbling brick as everything else in central London. ‘Atmosphere,’ as they put it, is nothing more than naive, flawed human perception.   
I much prefer studying in places, and with people, who refrain from pretending to be something they’re not. Hence why I’m writing my senior seminar in a bar. I find myself able to concentrate, despite the blaring music. “What do you expect?”   
The lyrics mock, hitting tantalizingly close to home, striking me like a spark on a rock as I rot, trying to melt farther and farther into Milton and his poetry and analyses and pretension. Am I kidding myself? What do I expect?  
My friends do their best to goad me into drinking, laughing, but I nudge Nikola away with the toe of my throat stompers and try to find myself in ancient lines. Goddamn, I just wanted to study. I wouldn’t have gone out in the first place, had it not been for Agnes’s pleading. I’d known her since graduate school, and she always knew just what to say to get me out of my flat.  
The place is loud and crowded, a single bartender incredibly overwhelmed by the shouting patrons. Whatever sports nonsense was going on this evening was blasted on four different TV’s, hogged by tall men with taller glasses. An obnoxious Cockney bloke picked a fight with an American, who was removed from the building after spitting a mouthful of teeth onto the table. Cockney could really punch. As loud as the building was, my people were louder. Their ability to adjust to any environment was normally lovely, as we all possessed the innate ability to read a room. Tonight, however, it was just annoying.  
In the end, it isn’t the people I’m with but the song on the radio that distracts me from my studies. The lyrics swam through me, achingly familiar. Was this Alex Turner? “I probably still adore you with your hands around my neck…”   
Jude laughed at her own joke.  
“Or I did, last time I checked…” The doors swung open, following a comedically theatrical cue from the song. I would have snorted, indulging my odd sense of humor, were it not for who had arrived.   
Helen was there, of course. Never one to miss a party, her jagged smile and headache laugh always found a way into any illicit affairs, whether we invited her or not. How did she expect to hold a glass with those acrylics? I, personally, wouldn’t like to spend any more time with her than explicitly necessary, but unfortunately, she seems to have befriended my friends.   
It wasn’t her that alarmed me so much as who was on her arm. Jane Prentiss threw back her head and laughed, something poetic I’d never seen her do before. I pulled my gaze away, telling myself it was annoyance with Helen and not jealousy that inspired me to. Why couldn’t I make her laugh like that?  
Jane and I aren’t friends.   
Well, that’s an oversimplification. We aren’t not friends, like Helen and I aren’t friends-we’ve just never really met. We go to the same parties, clinging to the same walls and avoiding socialization in the same way, I dragged there by Agnes and her by Jude. We take the same classes, share the same hatred of goddamn Professor Bouchard (selfish asshole,) and hold the same love for poetry.   
And yet, I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with her one on one. We move in the same circles, laugh at the same jokes, but never at any of each others’. We share friends but are not friendly. We share interests, but do not connect. That’s what I tell myself when I wonder why we’re strangers. Do I want us to be strangers?  
I don’t think I do.   
“Not shy of a spark, the knife twists at the thought…”  
Helen sits across from Jude.  
“...that I should fall short of the mark…”  
And Jane sits next to me.  
“Evening ladies,” Helen cooed, in that wooing voice of hers that was so obviously fake. Everything she was was a front. If Jane was really friends with her, did I want to associate?  
And then Jane Prentiss smiled at me, and my mind settled on yes.   
She hadn’t brushed her hair in a week, having the appearance of an insomniac with a caffeine problem, but something in the way she rolled her eyes made me desperate for her attention. Her fingers were like a pianist’s, with the grace of a practiced musician. I was about to ask if she played when she asked me a question that struck me as odd.   
“So, you’re that sort of English major, I’d assume,” she said, gesturing my book. “Hamlet. You must be a cynic or a romantic, so which is it?” I must have looked at her funny, because she scooted her chair back a little when meeting my eyes. It was rare for me to look particularly friendly, so I wasn’t too surprised. I tried to compensate with a smile, which may or may not have made it worse, so I gave up and answered the question.   
“Neither, actually. I think you’d find my perspective… pretentious.” I said.   
“I find pretension endearing,” she remarked, reaffirming in my mind my desire to have this conversation.  
“I think Hamlet was a schizophrenic.”  
“Oh,” She said.  
“Yeah, oh. I think classical literature, especially Shakespeare, grants too much context to the author’s intent and not to the impact with which it was received. Hamlet’s message is much more relevant to modern times as the tale of a young man, struggling with delusions and floundering mental health, who meets his tragic end after failing to recognize himself for what he was. It’s a metaphor for today’s youth, I feel. Think about it,” I enthused, gesturing wildly.   
Her eyes held an emotion I couldn’t name, but I knew it was warm. The song meandered on in the background. Encouraged and breathless, I continued.   
“Think about it! Early-onset schizophrenia is rare but especially common in trauma victims. The death of Hamlet’s father left him shattered. Seeing the ghost was an awakening of sorts, and the beginning of his end. He proceeds to become increasingly delusional as his friends and family try and fail to understand his illusioned perspective. The killing of Polonius is a metaphor representing the final straw of a psychotic break. The slaughter in the final act stands for the loss of Hamlet’s perception of reality; the world as he knew it was dead. It serves as a tragedy, but also a warning. I’m.... Probably going to fail this seminar,” I finished with half a smile.   
Jane didn’t react the way I thought she would. Rather than feigned fascination or mild disinterest, her brow furrowed in contemplation as she considered what I’d said.   
“I disagree,” she mused quietly, burying her mouth in her drink. Was she nervous? Why would she be nervous? I tried to be encouraging.   
“Speak up, love! I don’t bite. Civil discourse in literature is one of my favorite things, actually.”   
Emboldened, she carried on. “I just think it’s inappropriate to dismiss Shakespeare’s artistry like that. The master of a work holds its keys, not the interpreter. That’s how I see it, anyway.”  
“Yes, understandable, but in the context of ancient tragedy, I feel as though the renewed perspective sheds a light on a modern issue that needs discussing-that is, the demonization of psychotic illness and the tendency of an untreated condition to alter a person from the inside out, creating something unrecognizable. That’s the difference between acts four and five, to me anyway.”  
Agnes shot Jude a cool stare that spoke without words. The two of them excused themselves, citing an early morning or a final to study for, pretending to be headed in opposite directions.   
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Nikola said. “They’re so in love, but can’t bear to let it show. I couldn’t imagine.”   
Jane smiled at her. “We know, darling. Especially since you wear your heart on your sleeve. You’re as readable as Ana’s book, but we do love you for it.”  
Ana. No one had called me that before.   
I tried not to look at her as my face burned red. Blushing was a strange and unusual occurrence for me, and I’d hate it if it became part of my first impression. Fortunately, if she did notice, she kept quiet about it.   
“Frightened of the bite, no it’s no harsher than the bark…”  
“Hasn’t this song played through already?” Helen scoffed. “I’m going to say something.” She stood up abruptly and walked in no particular direction, searching for a poor employee to torment.   
“Helen, stop! We’ve talked about this…” Nikola stuttered after her. We were alone now, two lonely hearts at a six-person table. Our chairs felt uncomfortably close with the newfound space.   
“I guess we’re in this together,” she said, clearly feeling as awkward as I was.  
“I guess so.” Should I try to smile? Tell a joke, maybe? People tell jokes, right? I wracked my brain to think of something, anything to say, but my mind was full of cobwebs and I came up empty. Just as I started to stutter through a phrase, she interrupted in that thoughtful way she did. Not exasperating, but an off-color cute.  
“Why haven’t we spoken before?”  
“Oh, I- I don’t know, I…. Didn’t know you wanted to, that’s all. I figured, uh, you had your friends and I had mine and… well, we had our friends, and our friends didn’t intersect in the same places a lot, and… well… I’m not that interesting, really I’m not, I just talk too much and overshare and...Yeah.” I was rambling. Although I felt like a stuttering fool, feeling the flush creep back into my cheeks, she was smiling.   
“Yeah,” she said. “Why don’t we fix that?”   
My heart dropped.  
“Okay,” I said.  
“Okay.”  
“Okay.”   
She grabbed her purse, getting up to leave.  
‘God that was awkward,’ I thought, cursing myself for failing to portray my calm, cool, collected self. ‘She’s leaving now. God knows we’ll never speak again.”   
Then, Jane held out her hand.  
“Okay?” She asked.  
Bemused, I took it. Maybe I hadn’t been that awkward after all.   
“Sure, Jane. Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!!! Thanks for reading this! I know it's short, but I hope you liked it nonetheless. It's been in my back pocket for a while, so I decided to buckle down and actually post it. The song referenced in it is 505 by Arctic Monkeys, which is a righteous bop. Also, my sincere apologies for the format. I copy/pasted from Google Docs, and for some reason, ao3 wouldn't do the indent. The next fic will look better, I promise. Oh, and there will be a next fic, hopefully longer this time. I'm thinking Jonmartin, but if anyone has any suggestions I'm happy to oblige.   
> -Jules


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